Roll Over, Moses: It's a Centrum Lincolnensis

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: November 8, 2000

What if Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts could be redesigned from the ground up by Michelangelo? Or Jefferson? Or Pericles? Or Nero?

Well, it might look something like the rival proposals submitted by three neo-Classical architects given a figurative free hand to take a wrecking ball to the center's 1960's modernist campus and start anew. Prompting the submissions, solicited by City Journal, the quarterly magazine of the Manhattan Institute, the generally conservative civic think tank, was the thought that the $1.5 billion that Lincoln Center hopes to raise for a massive renovation could instead be used for a complete fresh start.

The submissions appear in the current fall issue. And Monday night, the architects, including two of Britain's leading classicists, Quinlan Terry and Robert Adam, joined three Americans from the firm Franck Lohsen McCrery of New York and Washington at a forum at a (naturally) neo-Classical private club in Midtown to share their visions and beat up on Lincoln Center's present design.

''Cheap and cheesy,'' were among the epithets hurled by Myron Magnet, the journal's editor, who contrasted what he called the ''stagy pastiche'' of the 18-acre complex at the intersection of Broadway and Columbus Avenue to New York classicist icons like Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library at 42nd Street, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University.

The suggestion, however tongue-in-cheek, that the world's biggest and busiest performing arts complex be razed like Ilium left Lincoln Center at least officially nearly speechless. Janice Price, its spokeswoman, commented, ''Lincoln Center appreciates the public interest in its redevelopment program.''

Although perhaps something of a Trojan horse in a broader culture war, the quasi-competition -- unrequested by Lincoln Center, although its incoming president and other curious officials showed up at the presentation -- seemed likely to hasten a debate about how the aging complex should be rejuvenated.

With the soft travertine exteriors and granite paving blocks pitting and splitting after some 40 city winters, acoustics in some halls problematic and facilities generally strained and underequippped for 21st-century technologies, Lincoln Center recently hired the architectural firms Cooper, Robertson & Partners and Beyer, Blinder & Belle to plan a sweeping renovation that consultants last year estimated could cost just short of $1.5 billion. Their plan is due late next spring. ''It occurred to us that the money could be better spent tearing down Lincoln Center,'' said Mr. Magnet, who sports an impressive set of 19th-century mutton-chop whiskers. He traced interest in the issue to an article he wrote six months ago praising the new Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. Although a sharp break with the Art Deco lines of the old planetarium, the bold geometries of the suspended globe within a cube drew his approval and invited, he said, a similar bold rethinking of Lincoln Center. The magazine then commissioned the three proposals.

Mr. Terry, of Erith & Terry in Dedham, England, retaining the existing layout, designed the opera house as a Roman temple with a giant Corinthian portico and flanking gardens to the north and south. What are now Avery Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater were conceived as Roman basilica and bath buildings with vaulted interiors. Two circular temples at opposite sides would accommodate outdoor performances, and the approach along an axis from Central Park would pass through a triumphal arch worthy of a cultural colossus. After all, said Mr. Terry, ''you are the single superpower in the world.''

''I really do like working for Americans,'' he said, ''apart from the fact that you have got the money.''

In the United States, he said ''there are no moral hangups against building a building in an 'outdated style,' as they put it,'' while in England, ''there's a vise-like grip over what they like done.''

''To Americans, morality is morality.'' he added, ''architecture is architecture.''

Mr. Adam, with offices in Winchester and London, offered the only plan to reorganize the site, a vision he said was inspired by the trapezoidal space of Michelangelo's Piazza di Campidoglio in Rome. In Mr. Adam's conception, the complex is rotated to present a diamond shape pointing to and incorporating the small existing Lincoln Square Park, which would be expanded into a focal point. The opera house at the back, or west point, of the diamond, would feature a Doric portico and giant Corinthian-style cylinder of an apartment tower. A long Corinthian loggia paralleling 62nd Street would lead to the State Theater. The plaza would further be bounded by a square-columned concert hall and vaulted theater building.

He spoke acidly of the failed axial plan that was supposed to give Lincoln center an opening to Central Park: the original planners could not clear a path through to Central Park West. He derided Lincoln Square Park, saying at first blush it is unclear that it constitutes a park. Park? ''You could have fooled me,'' he said. It was lost in the urban shuffle. The result, he continued, is the Lincoln Center now sits astride what he called ''an incredibly dangerous highway junction.''

Mr. Adam also had harsh words for the concrete bridge over 65th street to the Juilliard School. ''Nasty space beneath, nasty space above,'' he called it.

The third plan, offered by the Americans Michael M. Franck, Arthur C. Lohsen and James C. McCrery 2d, of Franck Lohsen McCreary, preserves the existing layout and also takes the Campidoglio as its inspiration. The massive buildings with domes and classical porticos and columns reach to Columbus Avenue, and the plaza is sprinkled with obelisks and statuary. The Damrosch Park amphitheater has been turned around so that it faces into the complex.

''We believe like classical music is of our time, classical architecture is as viable today as yesterday,'' said Mr. Franck, who with his colleagues has worked with one of the nation's leading neo-Classical architects, Allan Greenberg.

Mr. McCrery said his calculations showed that their plan could be built for no more than the $1.5 billion price tag put on the renovation (including demolition and $300 million for temporary quarters). However, some planners noted, the renovation figure put together by the Lincoln Center board was a maximum that includes a new building and the wish lists of every one of the center's constituent organizations. As for how the family of Avery Fisher might feel about losing the hall endowned with his millions, Mr. McCrery said, ''Hyphenation is a wonderful thing.'' The new hall, he suggested, could share the name of the new and old donors.

Among those who attended the presentation, out of curiosity rather than any conviction it might be implemented, was Gordon J. Davis, chosen less than two weeks ago to be Lincoln Center's next president, replacing Nathan Leventhal, who is retiring after 17 years. Mr. Davis, chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is getting its own new $115 million hall in the Columbus Center development at Columbus Circle, listened avidly but declined to comment afterward.

Rebecca Robertson, Lincoln Center's new manager of the reconstruction project, also attended and declined to comment.

Henry J. Stern, the Parks Commissioner, was only slightly more forthcoming. ''Classicism emerges from the closet,'' he said.

A big question left unanswered at the soiree was how the famously independent-minded constituents of Lincoln Center might greet the prospect of surrendering their halls in favor of classical temples. Some of them, like the Metropolitan Opera, are quite fond of their homes.